8 Ways To Be Ultra-Productive In Your Work

Setting goals and creating plans for achieving success is one thing but actually following through and getting everything done is another.

This is often one of the the biggest obstacles that many people face in their business lives, there are never enough hours in the day.

So how do ultra-productive people do it? There are a few skills these people have that help them to get a lot done. Let’s take a look at what these are so you can use them in your own life.

Use your experience

People who achieve a lot are often able to challenge the norm of how things are usually done in a particular type of business. They have often worked in different industries and can take a new approach to work from one industry to another.

When you are about to start something new and feel like you are overwhelmed, try to think outside the box and see if you can find a new way of approaching the task.

Don’t waste time with unproductive meetings

Productive people don’t spend lots of time in meetings and if they do go to meetings they know exactly what the outcome needs to be and how long the meeting should last for.

Meetings are well known for being time drains so if you want to start to raise yourself to the levels of the ultra-productive, it’s a good idea to look at the meetings you are having and see if you can skip them or cut down on them.

Work isn’t everything

It’s easy to think that ultra-productive people must spend all their time working. But this isn’t really the case. Productive people do work hard but they make sure that they have lives outside of work.

Having activities outside of the office refreshes you to be able to approach your work in a better way. Taking time out gives you a new perspective on the tasks you are trying to achieve and can teach you new skills.

Substitute email for the phone or face to face communication

Email is easy but sometimes deceptively easy. You can ask a simple question by email that turns into a long string of correspondence that drains time.

Pick up the phone and speak to the person you want to contact or if they are in the same office as you walk over and speak to them. You will often get a far better response by phone or face to face and will develop better relationships with people.

Have good people around you

Having people around you that you can trust and that you can delegate tasks to is important. This can work if you are a CEO or are a one person freelancer. As a freelancer you can outsource jobs you don’t want to do yourself so you free up more time to do the jobs that you are good at and enjoy.

By doing the work you are good at you will do a better job far faster than struggling with the tasks that you don’t like.

Write to do lists the day before

At the end of the day sit down and write a list of everything you want to get done the next day. Start with the hardest tasks first so you can focus most of your energy on them at the start of the day.

Once the hardest jobs are done you will find that you are more likely to sail through the rest of the jobs on your list.

Review your performance at the end of the day

Just before you sit down to write your to do list, review what you achieved that day. If you haven’t completed everything you wanted, it is likely to give you the motivation to finish what you set out to do. This might mean staying in the office to get things done.

The more you do this, the more you will want to get to the end of the day having completed everything on your list. It will feel like a success, and small successes along the way can keep you motivated to stay the course.

Do one thing at a time

Focus is one of the best ways to be more productive at anything you do. If you try and do lots of things at once you are going to do a mediocre job at everything and probably complete nothing.

Focus on one thing at a time, do an excellent job at it and finish it so you are happy with what you did. You will find that your productivity will increase dramatically as you tick things off your to do list quickly.

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How do you become ultra-productive at work? Share your tips in the comments!

Discussion

I shut off my cell phone and email when I really need to focus on a task, especially one that I know won’t take long if I avoid all distractions. I will often put my office phone on “do not disturb” and ask the administrative assistant to only alert me if it’s a critical call (note: she’s never had to interrupt me). My boss is the only person I will respond to immediately.

Also, I find eating away from my desk makes me more productive at my desk. I tend to believe I can’t do anything truly productive while I’m eating, so I poke around on the computer. I end up taking longer to eat and avoid productivity.

Writing to-do lists the day before is one of the absolute best ways that I have found to stay productive. That way you can dive right in when you get into work the next morning, instead of spending time trying to figure out what you had been working on the day before.

I am a big to-do list person. But when to-do lists get long and the feeling of being over whelmed starts, I take my to-do list on a separate note pad and pick no more than 5 tasks I want to complete that day. It helps me regain that focus and earn a sense of accomplishment within the chaos.

I completely agree that work isn’t everything. This is one of my biggest pet peeves – when someone works and works and works, but doesn’t make time for themselves or their families. A strong work-life balance is necessary to ensure that we don’t burn ourselves out, that we re-focus our priorities, that we refresh and rejuvenate our mind, body, and spirit. After all, why are we working so hard if we can’t enjoy the fruits of our labor?